A piece of aluminum found on a Pacific island in 1991 could have been a patch that the famed aviator used to repair her lost aircraft.

You're looking a piece of one of the biggest mysteries in aviations history. Aviation investigators now say they are near-certain this chunk of metal came from Amelia Earhart's plane.

The scrap of aluminum was first found by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) in 1991. It didn't seem to fit in with the missing plane, though, as it didn't match the materials from her Model 10 Electra.

But photographic records told a different story: According to Richard Gillespie of the TIGHAR, the photo shows that the aluminum was an impromptu patch on the plane, covering an area that was likely a rear window. It's visible in the photo toward the rear of the vehicle.

The scrap was discovered 23 years ago on Nikumororo, an island in the Pacific Ocean. Recent sonar images of the surrounding waters indicate an object below the surface, which might be Earhart's plane. Gillespie now speculates that Earhart and copilot Fred Noonan may have survived on the island for a while, but that high tides eventually pulled their plane into the water, destroying any chance of escape.

TIGHAR will return to the island soon to hunt for more pieces of the plane, hoping to solve the mystery once and for all. ROVs and divers will investigate the subsurface blips that could be the final resting place of the Electra. If they're successful, then 70 years of speculation may finally come to a close.

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